Tavi and the Taviettes

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Tavi Gevinson, 17, has been gathering followers among young women with a creative bent.CreditCreditEmily Berl for The New York Times

By Judy Abel

April 2, 2014

She counts among her friends the actress Emma Watson, the singer Lorde and the fashion designer Rachel Antonoff (“She has gravitas”), but the real impact of Tavi Gevinson, the 17-year-old fashion-prodigy-turned-publishing-mogul, can be seen most clearly in the young women who circle in her orbit.

Since she founded Rookie, an online magazine, in 2011, young women have embraced Ms. Gevinson’s unambiguous message that community and self-empowerment are essential survival tools for adolescence.

Ms. Watson, though six years older than Ms. Gevinson, said she found the two had a lot in common when they met at the TED talks in 2012 and started chatting.

“She related to me in a way that most interviewers can’t,” Ms. Watson wrote in a recent email. “She is also incredibly honest. It’s difficult not to feel like you can trust someone like that. You feel vulnerable, but she is vulnerable too. She is also in this arena.”

Ms. Gevinson’s willingness to put herself in the spotlight sets an example for all women, regardless of their age, Ms. Watson said.

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Since Tavi Gevinson came to the attention of the fashion world when she was 12, she has been gathering followers.CreditReuters

“Being a young woman is confusing,” Ms. Watson wrote. “Tavi interprets, rationalizes and articulates so much of what we experience, and in doing so destigmatizes it. I think Tavi makes women unafraid of themselves.”

Ms. Gevinson seems to embrace her role as a den mother to the creative tween set. “I feel like feminism is the kind of thing that can improve people’s lives and, with Rookie, we help girls feel better about themselves and find a sense of community,” Ms. Gevinson said. “I try to spread that out in everything I do, instead of working toward some static goal.”

That message has clearly found its following among young women with a creative bent. Here are some key members of what might be called, with perhaps a bit of hyperbole, the Tavi Generation.

Petra Collins

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Petra Collins.CreditCasey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

It’s hard to imagine Petra Collins feeling insecure. After all, the 20-year-old photographer doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything. She recently caused a stir by posting a picture of herself on Instagram, wearing a bikini bottom with pubic hair visible. The site’s administrators almost immediately deleted her account, creating a platform for Ms. Collins to rail against society’s sanitized standards of female beauty.

“Obviously I knew the image wasn’t accepted and that there would be some people who didn’t like it,” Ms. Collins said during a recent Skype conversation from Toronto.

So what could have made this envelope-pushing artist feel sheepish? It seems that three years ago, when Ms. Gevinson was getting the first issue of Rookie off the ground, Ms. Collins thought her work might not be up to Ms. Gevinson’s exacting standards.

“I submitted my photos to her almost reluctantly because I was unsure about my work,” Ms. Collins said, adding that she was thrilled when Ms. Gevinson offered to hire her.

Since then, the two have become good friends and Ms. Collins credits Ms. Gevinson and Rookie for showing her that the best way to boldly make a mark is by putting out ideas without worrying what people think.

“You don’t have to wait for anyone’s approval to do things,” she said. “You don’t have to try to get a job and go through set steps before you start a career or start your life. That’s what I want young girls to know — you can do anything you want. Just start. That’s how Rookie started.”

Arabelle Sicardi

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Arabelle Sicardi.CreditDanny Ghitis for The New York Times

Arabelle Sicardi aspires to “run the world.” And she apparently plans to do it with makeup.

Ms. Sicardi, 21, hopes to one day start her own line of cosmetics because, contrary to traditional thinking, she believes makeup empowers women, rather than objectifies them.

“All my work operates around feminism, queer theory and makeup — that’s everything I live for,” she said. “To treat makeup as a way to look better for other people is damaging. But I approach it as a way of resistance. I hate getting catcalled, and I used to get catcalled all the time by twerps. But then I started approaching makeup as a weapon, and I would wear it in a way that would freak them out. Then I felt safer in my body.”

In fact, it was Ms. Sicardi’s distinctive style that caused Ms. Gevinson to take notice of her when the writer was pitching her story ideas. “She wanted to use me for a model for a photo shoot for the first issue,” she explained. “And now she’s more than my boss — she’s one of my closest friends.”

And, like many friends of Ms. Gevinson’s, Ms. Sicardi is a definite multitasker. She is a senior at Rutgers University and is a regular freelancer at Teen Vogue. In addition, she has a part-time job near campus; writes a style blog called Fashion Pirate; runs “Powder doom,” a makeup Tumblr; and contributes to a variety of publications.

Rachel Trachtenburg

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Rachel Trachtenburg.CreditIlya S. Saveno/Getty Images

Like others in the Tavi set, the musician and sometime social activist Rachel Trachtenburg connected to the young style guru after Ms. Gevinson asked her to participate in Rookie projects. Ms. Trachtenburg was introduced to her by Anaheed Alani, a Rookie editor (or “Ira Glass’s wife,” as Ms. Trachtenburg called her), and soon she and her band at the time, Supercute, were playing at Rookie events and being featured in an early Rookie edition.

In the ensuing years, the two have developed a kinship, both sharing the idea that there’s no time to waste when it comes to the business of pursing dreams. Ms. Trachtenburg, 20, currently plays drums in two bands, the Prettiots, a New York-based, ukulele-fronted, all-girl pop band, and Larry & the Babes, a Brooklyn-based garage band. She has also recently embarked on a solo career, performing a genre she described as “psychedelic folk.”

Like Ms. Gevinson, Ms. Trachtenburg believes being an adult is not a necessary component to being a success.

“It could be that Tavi’s friends are unique in that they possess a certain assuredness that has allowed them to deviate from the traditionally prescribed paths,” she said. “Because it’s a struggle and you need to drown out those voices from other generations who say, ‘What are you going to do if it falls through?'”

Amy Rose Spiegel

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Amy Rose Spiegel.CreditDanny Ghitis for The New York Times

To hear Amy Rose Spiegel tell it, working at Rookie is not just a job. It’s a calling.

“Personally, I’m an artist, but the things I do for Rookie, I do in the service of teenage girls,” said Ms. Spiegel, 22, a story editor at Rookie and an aspiring fiction writer.

Growing up, she said, she had few female friends because she saw other girls as competition (and given her striking good looks, the other girls probably had similar feelings about her). But now, she said, it’s her mission to let young women know they have a support system.

“I want to do anything I can in the service of making teenage girls feel like they’re not alone and that they’re not insane for feeling the way they feel,” she said during a recent meeting at a Brooklyn bar. “Rookie provides an ideological community for girls, and if I could have taken a respite in that growing up, it would have been helpful.”

She views Ms. Gevinson as a visionary, not because she changed what it meant to be a teenage girl, but because she legitimized it.

“I think it’s kind of incredible because teenage girls have been making art and feeling things very strongly for as long as there have been teenage girls,” she said. “Tavi has given people the cue that it’s O.K. to be this and it’s O.K. to do that.”

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of an all-girl pop band, which Rachel Trachtenburg plays in.The name of the band is the Prettiots, not the Prettiest.